The general observation for Andoy Ranay’s Diary ng Panget is that it can be viewed as a substandard Cinderella byproduct — and it is — where the youth revolt for reasons no greater than excess pimples and earlier Mac book generations. Though one particular scene gleams in utter radiance and nags of biting reality: in a student council
Category: Reviews
Barber’s Tales
For most of Jun Lana’s new film Barber’s Tales (alternatively known as Mga Kwentong Barbero), the women who live in the small rural town fraught under Ferdinand Marcos’ regime, in their respective crises are either battered or deprived. If they are not fixtures, they are instruments; never truly people to
Ang Katiwala
Meant — rather explicitly — as a propaganda for the late President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines Manuel L. Quezon, Aloy Adlawan’s Ang Katiwala (The Caretaker), makes for a convoluted debacle of an assortment of ideas that are never entirely developed. The scripting is weak. It finds an illiterate family
Les Revenants
In Les revenants (They Came Back, 2004) the threat posed by a vast river of bodies inexplicably risen from their recent deaths, is far more internal than losing jugulars and seeing outbreaks of mass contagion. The film — directed by Robin Campillos — relies on the primitive terrors of tragedy, pressed
Final Exam
Echoing John Carpenter’s seminal slasher, Jimmy Huston’s almost-forgotten Halloween wannabe Final Exam (then an unconscious subversion of the slasher genre), is an audaciously soiled exercise yet comes to dissatisfying fruition. The film may also be viewed as a gesture to boycott what is to come upon the release of Friday the 13th, the
Overtime
There are a lot of things going for Overtime — Wincy Aquino Ong’s ‘big pharma is bad’-commentary slapstick-actioner — although a lot of things also aren’t. Firstly, it is genre-bending; rarely is it that we see an awkward tech-whiz (whom we meet no earlier than halfway through the film) not only
Dagitab
There is not much to do but surrender to Giancarlo Abrahan’s Dagitab (alternatively titled The Sparks), a film that holds captive its audience. It radiates in visual and textual opulence that only the deftest of hands can achieve. One scene in particular makes a perfect summation of the film as a fine work
1st Ko Si 3rd
In Real S. Florido’s 1st Ko si 3rd time plays two roles: one that creates a void and another that fills it. The case of Cory, an ageing woman compelled to rekindling an old flame, is curious and endearing, yet touches something deep and true: time is an eternal debt
Children’s Show
Only a few frames from completely wallowing in its relentless, almost-stifling realism, director Roderick Cabrido’s debut feature Children’s Show swivels to the truly weird and beams us out of the film, where it is most necessary. Knowing when to retreat back a step shows calculation in his film’s ultra-violent madness;
#Y (Hashtag Y)
Gino M. Santos’s follow-up to his exuberant if shrouded debut The Animals is set once again within a circle of upper-class, party-‘till-drop youth (here, a quartet of twenty-somethings) frequenting night bars as if they were their sacred intersections, flush in neon lights and pumped with skittering beats and booming synths. The
Mariquina
Jerrold Tarog’s ingenious work in last year’s Cinemalaya-entry Sana Dati distinguishes him as a man of fine, filmic talent: his film, closing the famed Camera Trilogy (sided with Confessional and Mangatyanan), is about acceptance and closure; yet it goes in all sorts of direction, transforming a simple romantic tale into
K’na, the Dreamweaver
“When Kana, a young T’boli woman, becomes a dreamweaver, she has the chance to weave together her village’s warring clans. But, will she give up true love to do so?”
Asintado
“In the middle of the preparation for Taong Putik Festival, a young man penniless and in love, takes on a drug courier job that goes terribly wrong. To save him, his mother now makes the most difficult decision of her life.”
Guardians of the Galaxy
Our fifteen-year-old selves, as I am confident is the same for most, live in an era in which we are most willing to plunge and spike into the nerdiest depths and heights of cinematic exploration in our lifetime. By close and objective inspection, this is the most awesome! The 80’s
“Latch” by Disclosure (ft. Sam Smith)
The irrepressible high of falling in love resonates in intoxicating surges of synthpop in Latch, Disclosure’s effusive and most ambitious track in their terrific debut album Settle — featuring UK singer Sam Smith. Accompanied by a music video that translates the track’s overall vibe (see above video), Latch winds through its pulsating beats, awash with transporting synth-waves by
Snowpiercer
Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho marks his momentous English-debut in Snowpiercer, a subversive, genre-melding and timely contemplation of an all-consuming society, confronted with an earth-wide layer of permafrost that renders humanity to near-extinction. What success The Wachowskis’ have achieved with their multi-dimensional odyssey that is The Matrix, Bong successfully achieves here with only
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Thrilling in every way but one, “X-Men: Days of Future Past” is the technically virtuous, wildly entertaining film that is to redeem its enduring franchise from its ostensible death marked by Brett Ratner’s butchered third film, “The Last Stand.” If this so-redemption hasn’t been done already in Matthew Vaughn’s 2011 prequel
The Sacrament
Ti West is among the very few contemporary genre filmmakers to receive much-deserved admiration: ‘tis from both the sizable fraction of the following he has cultivated over the years, people who enjoy most of all his abrupt third-act carnage; and the rest of his admiring audience, who perhaps are more
Maleficent
Meant as a redemptive ticket for the iconic villainess (which, in all Disney-goodness, can mean Immediate Character Humanization, and this is), Robert Stromberg’s revisionist take on “Maleficent” is a curious retelling, though not exactly as great and just of the beastly wicked faery. Stromberg and writer Linda Woolverton’s logic here is
22 Jump Street
Unless Vietnamese Jesus is not enough indication, one must be able to predict that Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s overtly self-knowing sequel “22 Jump Street” is about, first of all, taking things up a notch. Hopping from twenty-one to the next is not entirely a convincing prefiguration (it is our
